From the Pastor
It will soon be Valentine’s Day. Soon we will order the flowers. We will run to the store to purchase cards and candy. We will make reservations at our favorite restaurants, or plan the surprise home cooked meal. We may even find a little gift, a stuffed bear or puppy, that we can send to someone just to show how much we love them. If this is your first Valentine’s Day with your loved one, then it will likely be a big deal. If you have been with your loved one for awhile, you may be asking yourself why we continue to mess with what seems to be an annual “non-optional social convention”.
A good friend of ours once wrote a blog post entitled, “Love Means Never Having to Say ‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’” His point was that love, particularly the love you share with a spouse, is not something that should require a holiday. If the love you share is genuine, true, and lived out each day, then Valentine’s Day will likely have less and less meaning for you and your significant other each year. It will be just another day on the calendar, because the love you share is something celebrated every day, whether you recognize it or not.
Yes, for some, Valentine’s Day is a good reminder. For those who have become so busy that they don’t have time to acknowledge their loved one, it can be a reminder to pause and give thanks for the gift you share. For those whose love language doesn’t include gifts or words of love, but whose partner’s does, this may be a good time to communicate your love in the way that is clear to him or her. If you are one of those people who always forgets Valentine’s Day, but your relationship could use some repair work this year, consider this your reminder that February 14th is fast approaching, so you better make your plans now.
The truth is, however, our friend was right. Love should be such a natural part of our most intimate relationships and our lives together that we shouldn’t need a holiday to remind us that love is the greatest gift. As Paul describes it, love has the power to outlast everything else.
I do wonder if the church could use a Valentine’s Day reminder this year. We can never be reminded enough that the greatest ideal to which we are called is love. We are called to love God with everything that we have and all that we are, and we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus told his disciples that the world would know they were his followers because they loved each other with the same love with which he loved them. The First Letter of John reminds us to love one another because the very nature of God is love. It was, after all, God who first loved us.
The world could use a reminder that the church loves it. Christ died for the world because he loves it, so the church must love it too. Love must flow through us as if it were the most natural part of our collective life. The greatest thing the church does is love…but sometimes we forget.
I wish it could go without saying, but that is only the case in the strongest of relationships when love is shown every day. Sometimes we are too busy with our own stuff to show the world we love it. Sometimes we are so wrapped up in our love language that we fail to consider a love language that might communicate the message more effectively. Sometimes we just forget to love at all.
Maybe this is our chance to make a new start, to try again. Maybe this is our chance to live Valentine’s Day and every day with so much love for the world around us that soon we wouldn’t need to say it. The world would just know.
What would it take for the world around us to know without a shadow of a doubt that the people of Augusta Road Baptist Church love it? How could we make it so abundantly clear that those who follow Christ together as this community of faith love their neighbors that we would no longer need to have the word “loving” in our mission statement as a reminder of who we are supposed to be? We would simply be a loving church. Mission accomplished. What kind of impact would that reality have on our community?
Beloved, let’s love one another, and let’s love the world around us. Let’s find a way to say it and show it this year. Add it to your Valentine’s Day to do list. And, whether my love for you is so clear that it goes without saying or not, Happy Valentine’s Day!
With Love,
Rev. W. Mattison King